9 May 2011

Come on, we all do it. A new iTunes update comes trickling into our computer and we’re prompted with the comically massive iTunes Terms and Conditions and just clickity click our lives away without even reading. But what’s really inside it?

5 May 2010

If you’re a digital-video professional – someone who records weddings, sells stock footage or edits B-roll – chances are good you deal with H.264. But after reading software licence agreements, you might well wonder if you have rights to do so.

25 January 2010

Microsoft and Apple, already strange bedfellows if we’re to believe Apple’s seriously considering Bing over Google on future iPhones, are at it again, albeit indirectly. This time it’s Microsoft’s turn, as they present counterarguments in an Xbox 360 antitrust case.

8 October 2008

Sleeping Beauty is Disney’s first classic animated film to make its way to Blu-ray, and it’s loaded with legitimately compelling BD-Live extra features. Format War Central tried to check these out, but got smacked with a 57 page EULA followed by a 63 page Privacy Policy before they could view any of them. Also upsetting: the new ending, in which Princess Aurora, upon waking up from Phillip’s kiss resolves to become a copyright lawyer for a large electronics company. [Format War Central]

4 September 2008

Google has responded with haste to the huge outcry about a section in Chrome‘s EULA that gives Google “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license” to do all kinds of dirty stuff—in public no less—to content you post through Chrome. Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, told Ars that it’s actually an oopsie from basically copying and pasting the same EULA it uses in other products, and that they’re updating it as fast as they can to remove the ridiculous terms.

So, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user licence agreement you didn’t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa?